Here is a nice shot of the northeastern sky that Mandy & I took in Wisconsin waaaay out in the country. Notice our galactic neighbor, Andromeda as the faint disc near right of center and down a little. We also managed to catch a satellite or a plane in there as well. Click to see full size hi-res image. I tweaked this in photoshop a little to highlight Andromeda.

This shot was take just north of Anamosa looking straight up at the zenith of the sky. Billions & Billions! Click to see full size.

Here’s hoping for better and more predictable weather. The night skies this summer have rainy and cloudy for the most part. If they weren’t cloudy or rainy they were thick with humidity that causes all kinds of irritations with telescope mirrors. Hopefully the rest of the summer brings better weather and the fall is crisp and clear.

So far this was the best telescope experience I have had to date and I was able to find a bunch of new Messier objects to add to our list. I left the house about 10:30pm and got home around 1:00am. I was so anxious to get out there that I had to turn back because I forgot my base! The base is important. It holds the telescope. Duh!

I won’t go into major detail here on the following objects. At any rate, here is a short list of each object observed last night for the first time by yours truly. I didn’t spend a ton of time observing each object due to how late it was getting. I sure learned a lot about locating these objects though.

Most impressive was the Ring Nebula (m57). It appeared like a faint smoke ring in the constellation Lyra. The Ring Nebula was once a star very similar to our own Sun that has exhausted all it’s primary fuel and has now expanded into a red giant. This will ultimately be the fate of our poor planet. Yay!

M27 (Dumbbell Nebula)

M52

M53

M56

M57 (Ring Nebula)

M63 (Sunflower Galaxy)

M64 (Black Eye Galaxy)

M71

I don’t have much to add, factually speaking to any of these. All that can be said has been said. I will say though that I had an absolute BALL hunting down these new objects and I look forward to revisiting them. I think I need to start taking better field notes so I have something to refer to the next time I make an entry here. I suggest checking out the Ring Nebula if you ever have a chance. It was really cool! I know I compared it to a smoke ring, but for some reason it made me hungry for calamari.

As I mentioned above, this was my first opportunity to get out under completely clear and dark skies. Also my first chance to really view the Milky Way. I cannot describe in words how mindblowing it is to scan around the Milky Way with a wide field view. Whenever I hear a Carl Sagan impression it is always “Billions and Billions”. Sure, it’s funny. It’s fun to do your best Carl Sagan voice and say stuff like “Billions and Billions” but it wasn’t until I actually viewed the Milky Way through my telescope before I fully realized and appreciated this cliché.  The field of view was literally strewn with thousands of tiny points of light in every direction. It’s such fun to just slowly scan around the star fields of our galactic neighborhood and put our own selves in that context. Where do we fit in? Are we so arrogant to believe that we are unique? Sometimes I have a hard time grasping the idea that I am a person standing on a rotating planet being hurled through space by gravity and living out a life so dependent upon a thousand cosmic variables. Modify any of these variables just a little and we wouldn’t be here.

How many tries does it take for life to take hold? How many tries does it take for intelligence to evolve from that life that has taken hold? Say you have a handful of 10 die. How many times do you throw these die before they all land on the same number? 1 thousand? 1 million? Throw these die enough times and eventually they will all land on the same number. We take life and this beautiful planet for granted. We think we are special and entitled. We make the mistake of assuming that this is all for us. I think we are lucky. We were dealt a royal flush on a cosmic scale. We are 1 in 100 million rolls of a handful of dice. Except the die that were rolled are 1000 sided dice the amount of die used in the roll are certainly much greater than a handful.

These are fun ideas to wrestle with. Simply asking them may be more important than answering them.  If you have never seen the Pale Blue Dot excerpt from Carl Sagan’s Cosmos please invest five minutes of your life and watch the video below. Carl Sagan’s idea to turn Voyager around as it left the Solar System to snap a picture of Earth is possibly one of the best ideas any human being has ever had.

Clear Skies!

The moon was late coming up so I snapped some images of Saturn that I think turned out fairly well.

A couple scope pictures.

Now that the moon is in the Waning phase, it is much later to rise. This gives a few hours of pretty dark skies. I am still looking forward to getting the scope out under total darkness.

They are by no means amazing images, but for my little Motorola Kraze they are definitely not too shabby!

Here are some cute little backyard astronomers exploring the surface of the moon.

Here are some of the better shots we ended up with. You can really see the cloudy haze around the outside of the moon in these.

This was shot using a Zhumell 30mm Wide Field eyepiece.

After the clouds overtook the moon we thought we would point the scope in the direction of Saturn for some experimental planetary photography. This is a little blurry, but I think it’s really cool!

This was shot using a 2x Barlowed 9mm eyepiece (4.5mm).

That’s pretty cool! No doubt about the rings on Saturn. I’ve color corrected this a little bit so it matches what we see through the eyepiece. I am not sure how we could get a better picture of Saturn with my current gear. Maybe a tripod, but even then there is very little light passing through three (2x Barlow, 9mm eyepiece, and camera lens) layers of glass so this might be as “in focus” as we are going to get.

We had a lot of fun trying to get these pictures. It’s very challenging and requires lots of patience. Nice work Luke!

It was also great to use this new site. It’s far enough away from the town lights to be considered dark and is situated way up on top of a hill with a nice 365 degree view of the sky, with the Buffalo Creek close by. There is even a picnic table for laying out gear and star charts. Can’t wait to head back out there on a crystal clear moon-less night. The Milky Way will explode with stars.

I observed the Beehive Cluster for the first time tonight. A beautiful open cluster located right in the middle of the constellation of Cancer (The Crab). First observed by Galileo, the Beehive Cluster is identified in the Messier Catalog as M44. It looked like a bunch of shiny gems. This is the first open cluster I have seen and I will definitely be looking for more.

Atlas Image [or Atlas Image mosaic] courtesy of 2MASS/UMass/IPAC-Caltech/NASA/NSF

It started to get a little chilly and dewy so I called it a night.

As a beginning backyarder I am becoming a little more skeptical of the weather forecasts. All the forecasts I saw today, including the astronomer’s Clear Sky Chart called for clouds all night and I just spend 3 hours under clear skies. There is always hope!

So with the first clear non-schoolnight I thought it would be a good chance for me to get Mary out under the stars. We packed up the scope in the accord for the first time (tight fit!), and headed out to the Barnyard to get set up. We pulled up with plenty of daylight left and waited for the first stars to show themselves. As we waited and watched for the first stars to appear we saw a very bright very fast moving light approach from the northwest and make it’s way across the sky exiting northeast. We watched in amazement because we knew this could only be one of two things. The ISS, or the shuttle Atlantis that had launched that same day. The next day we did some research and find out that we had indeed observed the International Space Station transit over North America. Too fracking cool for school!! If you have never seen this, it’s truly a sight to behold. Big and bright and moving very fast. You can’t help but think of the scientists and experts on board as they pass directly over you and wonder if they might be looking back down at you. Or at least in your general direction.

By this time the sky was getting dark and we pointed our scope at the old favorite, Saturn. This time I let Mary do the driving. I showed her how to use the Telrad, then the finder and finally the eyepiece. This is where Dobsonian mount shines. It’s so simple and easy to use. I can’t stress how cool it is to see your 7 year old take control and push the scope around and locate just about anything she can see with her naked eye. Mary had located Saturn and soon we were shuffling through eyepieces to get better views. It was about this time that Mary asked if we could listen to AstronomyCast while we were observing. I got out the ipod and flicked on the episode about Globular Clusters and let it play in the background while we looked around the sky. AstronomyCast is awesome. If you have any interest whatsoever in this subject I highly recommend checking it out. The hosts are knowledgeable and friendly and explain very complex ideas in ways anyone can understand.

The seeing on Friday night wasn’t ideal, but it was good enough to get some good views of Saturn. Mary was getting a little cold and I noticed some yawns here and there.  I asked if she wanted to head back to the house but she insisted she was fine. I gave her the ipod and she used StarMap Pro to look around finding constellations first on the Ipod, then in the sky. I have some concerns about the boredom factor here. I really love taking her out but I understand that hunting galaxies isn’t the most exciting thing in the world for someone with a 7 year old attention span. I want this to be a fun and educational experience as well as quality time spent with ole dad, but I also don’t want to push too hard and risk her losing interest. I let Mary take control of the scope and just start pointing and looking at anything she wanted. We looked at a few bright stars and Saturn a few more times and before I knew it my observing partner was sound asleep next to me curled up in a folding chair. Cute stuff. I capped the telescope and picked her up and brought her home. She was worn out and it was getting late.

When I got back to the Barnyard the skies were better and I started looking around to see what I could see. Just then Barnwood Bob and his friend Bonnie showed up for some post General Store stargazing. I told him I would be there and I was hoping he would stop out. I went straight to Saturn and gave them a look. Always a crowd pleaser! I know it probably sounds like all I look at is Saturn, but it just never gets old. Especially for people who have never had the chance to see it. There is always an extended “wow” or maybe a “oh, hell yeah!” the first time you see it. Bonnie’s brother Bill arrived shortly after and we showed him the same thing. Bill was hooked. Bob and Bonnie left and showed Bill his bed for the night on the third floor of the big barn. That’s deluxe. I can think of no better place to get a good nights sleep within a 300 mile radius, than the soft feather bed on the third floor of the big barn. Then it was just Bill and me and the sky. We found a M81 and M82 and Bill was looking at his first galaxies. I thought it was cool that we had only known each other for 5 minutes and here I was with this perfect stranger observing objects that were upwards to 25 to 40 million lightyears away. Even better was that he seemed to be interested and not the least bit underwhelmed with the faint fuzzy factor. You would be surprised how many people expect Hubble quality views through an 8″ telescope. I wish that were true, but the fact of the matter is that sometimes you have to use your imagination a little bit. I see a faint fuzzy ball but in my mind I know its a bright cluster containing hundreds of thousands of stars. Next we checked out the great globular clusters in Hercules, M13, Serpen’s M5, and M4 in Scorpio.

It was getting late and the following day was going to be a big one. I had plans to be in the Barnyard all day cooking and hanging out playing music into the night so I packed up the scope, said goodbye to my new friend and headed home for bed.

Here are some pics from the next day and night. We had a blast!! Thanks to Barnwood Bob for making this town a truly better place to live. Check out some of his artwork here and buy something while you’re there!

American Gothic is the most parodied painting this side of the Mona Lisa. Here is our own little take on it.

Get out the fiddle, rosin up the bow.


Doug & Lisa Frey take the stage while Mary listens from the best seat in the house.

Harriet with Barnwood Bob and Bonnie looking on.

Hold on tight!

Mary on the Barnyard sized Drum Riser.


Matt & Andrew hanging out “back stage”

Barnwood Bob silhouetted by his bonfire.

My aunt and uncle were passing through to visit on their way to Southern Illinois for a big graduation ceremony (go Jane!). Hoping everyone was still awake I called down to my Dad’s and said he and my uncle should come down if they wanted some decent planetary views of Saturn. So they walked down and got a few good views before the clouds rolled in again. It’s really fun to show people Saturn for the first time. Even when seeing conditions are below average, Saturn is dependable and faithful and it never ceases to impress.

Later that night things really cleared off so I went back out to see what I could find. I didn’t really have a plan for finding anything but I had a pretty open sight to the Virgo Constellation and I knew I was bound to find something there. Virgo is absolutely littered with galaxies. The galaxies in Virgo are part of the Virgo Supercluster. That is the same supercluster  that is home for our Local Group and very own Milky Way and nearest galactic neighbor, Andromeda. The Virgo Supercluster is our home. It contains over 100 galaxy groups and clusters and thousands and thousands of individual galaxies. I knew if I was patient enough I could scan around the upper part of Virgo and I was bound to run into *something* interesting. I wasn’t prepared for what I was about to find though.

I pointed the Telrad about half way through Virgo’s “arms” and began scanning around with a Barlowed 30mm (15mm Barlowed) wide field. A faint patch of light suddenly appeared in my eyepiece. “Gotcha” I said allowed. (I talk to myself) Then another, and another and another. Two galaxies in the same field and two more on top of each other just outside the field of view. Holy smokes. They all seemed to be in a perfect row. What had I found? I tried in vain to figure out exactly which galaxies I had in my sights. I was using StarMap Pro on my Ipod Touch but honestly the galaxies on this application in this part of the sky are just too numerous and I am not familiar enough with the night sky to know exactly what I am looking at. I observed these beauties for a little longer while trying to unsuccessfully identify them and decided to pack it in. I was getting cold and it was getting late.

Disclaimer: This is not even close to the view I get through my telescope. Think fainter, fuzzier. From right to left are M84, M86, and NGC4458 & NGC4461.

The next day after checking some star maps and still not knowing what I found I consulted the friendly experts on the CloudyNights.com forums. This is a great resource for novice and expert backyard astronomers. I described what I saw and where I looked and in minutes someone replied that I had gotten into Markarian’s Chain. Markarian’s Chain?? I googled up some images and sure enough this is exactly what I had seen. I had found 4 galaxies out of a possible observable 8 in a chain stretching through the Virgo constellation. I had found M84, M86, and NGC4458 & NGC4461. Now that I know what I am looking at I am excited to go back and hunt down the rest of the members in this amazing chain of galaxies. I can now mark off two more Messier Objects. To be fair, I will most likely share these objects with my observing partner (Mary) before I check them off our list. Thanks to the folks on the forums at CloudyNights.com, I will be able to tell her what we are looking at.

I suppose if Deepak Chopra could cause the latest Los Angeles earthquake by meditating too hard (Really Deepak?), then all my concentrated excitement while anticipating the delivery of our new 8″ dob could cause disturbances in the weather. I mean it’s not like it’s spring, on the planet earth, in the northern hemisphere, in the midwest, where if there is one thing you can depend on, it’s the weather!  [sarcasm]

Here’s hoping for crystal clear, or at least partly clear with a chance of crystal clear in the coming nights. Notice the little square chart thingy on the right? Thats my handy little astronomer’s forecast. Dark blue is good. White is bad. There is some blue on it’s way. As President Laura Roslin would say: “Oh thank the Gods!”